Carbon dating really accurate

1. Rate of Decay

Whenever reallyy worldview of evolution is questioned, the topic of carbon dating always comes up. Here is how carbon dating works and the assumptions it is based upon. Radiation from the sun strikes the atmosphere of the earth all day long. This energy converts about 21 pounds of nitrogen into radioactive carbon This radioactive carbon 14 slowly decays back into normal, stable nitrogen. Extensive laboratory testing has shown that about half of the C molecules will decay in 5, years.

This is called the half-life. In theory it would never totally disappear, but after about 5 half-lives the difference is not measurable with any degree of accuracy. This is why most people say carbon dating is only good for objects less than 40, years old. Nothing on earth carbon dates in the millions of years, because the scope of carbon dating only extends a few thousand years.

Willard Libby invented the carbon dating technique in the early s. The amount of carbon 14 in the atmosphere today is about. Since sunlight causes the formation of C in the atmosphere, and normal radioactive decay takes it out, there must be a point where the formation rate and the decay rate equalizes. This is called the point of equilibrium. If you were trying to fill a barrel with water but there were holes drilled up the side of the barrel, as you filled the barrel it would begin leaking out the holes.

At some point you would be putting it in and it would be leaking out at the same rate. You will carbon dating really accurate be able to fill the barrel past accurzte point daing equilibrium. In the same way the C is being accurat and decaying simultaneously. A freshly created earth would require about 30, years for the amount of C in the atmosphere to reach this point of equilibrium because it would leak out as it is being filled.

Tests indicate that the earth has still not reached equilibrium. There is more C in the atmosphere now than there was 40 years ago. This would prove the earth is not yet 30, years old! This also means that plants and animals that lived in the past had less C in them than do plants and animals today. Just this one fact totally upsets data obtained by C dating. Animals eat the plants and make it part of their tissues. A very small percentage of the carbon plants take in is radioactive C When a plant or animal dies, it stops taking in air and food so it should not daing able to get any new C The C in the plant or animal will begin to decay back to normal nitrogen.

The older an object is, the less carbon 14 it contains. One gram of carbon from living plant material causes a Geiger counter accurxte click 16 times per minute as the C decays. A sample that causes 8 clicks per minute would be 5, years old the sample has gone through one half-life and so on. Although this technique looks good at first, carbon dating rests on at least two simple assumptions. These are, obviously, the assumption that the amount of carbon 14 in the atmosphere has always been constant and that its rate of decay has always been constant.

Neither of these assumptions is provable or reasonable. An illustration may help: Imagine you found a candle burning in a room, and you wanted to determine how long it was burning before you found it. You could measure the present height of the candle say, 7 inches and the rate of burn say, an inch per hour. In order speed dating pitcher and piano bristol find the length of time since the candle was lit, we would be forced to make some assumptions.

We would, obviously, have to assume that the candle has always burned at the same rate, and assume an initial height of the candle. The answer changes based on the assumptions. Similarly, scientists do not know that the carbon decay rate has been constant. They do not know that the amount of carbon 14 in the atmosphere is constant. Present testing shows the amount of Carbon dating really accurate in the atmosphere has been increasing since it was first measured in carbon dating really accurate s.

This may be cating in to the realky strength of the magnetic aaccurate. In addition to the above assumptions, dating carbon dating really accurate are all subject to the geologic column date to verify their accuracy. If a date obtained by radiometric dating does not match the assumed age from the geologic column, the radiometric date will be rejected.

The so-called geologic column was developed in the early s over a century before there were any radio- metric dating methods. There are about 7 or 8 radioactive elements that are used today to try to date objects. Each one has a different half-life and a different range of ages it is supposed to be used for. No dating method cited by evolutionists is unbiased.

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